Draft: Fanmade unit lore

I'm having fun making fanmade descriptions of the units and how they were developed, in no way related to the actual development. (Any similarities are a coincidence) I will make a separate post when I'm done, and this post will be forgotten.

NOTE: Separate post done, this post can be forgotten.



Here is what I have so far:

General knowledge

Rovers are the first drones, repurposed to quickly reclaim post-apocalyptic territory. Cheap and effective, a wonder of technology, looked down upon every other engineer.

Cloakbots are robots meant to replace human warfare, gone wrong. Borrow the same design with different weapons. Gains the same advantages as a human troop, and more, invalidating human intervention outside of command.

Tanks are a classic. Designed to take a beating and dish out heavy damage. Robotic crew allowed for tighter designs.

Ships are the first automated vehicle. Over time, grown stronger, but relatively unchanged. Made specifically for sea, to be able to house the clumsiest of guns.

Shields are a protectorate army gone wrong. Initially meant to reduce human losses, ended up being used to abuse power and strength with minimal losses. Appropriately renamed as thugs, down from defenders.

Spiders are designed for sieging the mountains. Preferred by monks, before being overrun.

Jumpbots are experimental weaponry. From flamethrowers to police units, from self-replicating drones to melee fighters. They were not made to be strong, but to confuse and surprise the enemy.

Hovers are revolutionary tech built for a niche. Meant to quickly surf the seas & terrorize islands, then get out, without getting damaged. Designed for blitzkrieg.

Amphs were made to assist in all situations, sea and desert, mountains and plains. Much of its tech is meant to support more specialized factories, from hulks to moblity.

Planes are made to assassinate key targets. Prolonged deployment is ill-advised.

Gunships are made for difficult terrain. They make best of mobility and speed. Some designs utilize high altitudes for increased performance.

Striders are experimental weaponry. Deployed by wealthy nations, they are meant to do a single task superbly.
Dante was designed to eliminate hives.
Scorpion was designed for assassinating targets.
Paladin was designed for general warfare.
Funnelweb was designed to assist general armies.
Detriment equips all the best tech, at the expense of absurd cost.
Ultimatum was designed to assassinate hefty targets.
Athena was designed as a general-purpose engineer and scout, for advanced warfare.

Environments

Land:
- Continents
- Rich islands
- Deserts
- Desolated lands
- Abundantly rich land
- Mountainscapes
- Chicken-infested lands
- Land of the Giants

Periods:
-Conquest
-Contest

Cloakbots (unfinished)

Glaives were designed to do everything a human soldier can do, but better. Instead of getting a cybernetically-enhanced cyborg, they got the full cybernetically-enhanced cybernetics. Glaive's intelligence was highly honed to be autonomous. The cybernetics were honed to ensure that glaives could be coordinated easily. Even better: When humans are effective 25% of the time, glaives are effective 100% of the time, and soon enough glaives overtook all battlefield. Their gears rusted over time, and only rarely do they get improvements, with the humans gone.

To deal with static defense, many propositions were made. Some engineers proposed rock-hurling weaponry, others suggested missile barrage. But the cloakbot engineers decided to borrow an ancient design and slap a rocket launcher on a glaive. Thus, the ronin was built. Unlike multiple similar designs, ronins are effective at retreating, a reason why many commanders prefer ronins above any other skirmisher.

When the conquest is over, and contest begins, heavy weaponry is in demand. Reavers borrowed an old design of light machine guns. Thanks to being more sturdy than a human, this beast does not bear one, but two LMGs. The amount of weight and ammunition makes the unit quite expensive, but well-worth the cost. It is cheap enough to be mass-produced, giving it an advantage over other "riot" unit designs.

To further inflate the cost of defenses, the "rock-hurling weaponry" has been implemented. Slings' ammunition is cheap. The reason why it causes so much damage is because of the velocity. And with advanced AI, the sling is mostly accurate; though... corruption in code has been reported.

To breach lines of defenses, a glaive design was given lots of armor. But just to make the design even better, they gave it a tesla gun that fries robotic circuitry. Lightning is fairly unpredictable, but it hits large targets consistently. Its slow movement means that the Knight can only be used at the frontlines.

Rovers (unfinished)

The scorcher proved to be both cheap and effective in small quantities, with its carcass being reused in future designs. It is the first designed vehicle for the wasteland environment. Earlier designs incorporated machine guns, before switching to heatrays. This made rovers more effective at taking out buildings. The heatray is also used often to scare the enemy from getting up close. The heatray, perhaps, is what makes the scorcher so cheap to field out, as even with little armor, it packs a strong heat. Seeing as different battlefields require different roles, different variations of chasis were built. Many units, such as fencers, ravagers, crashers, were optimized so that they can catch up to scorchers, as to abuse the scorcher's weapon.

Rovers needed a unit that can deal with static units fast and cheaply. Multiple designs were proposed, but they all proved way too expensive for their cost. After some thinking, they swapped Fencer's rocket launcher with homing missiles. Suddenly, fencers became a force to be reckoned with, stripping both turrets and entire armies alike. To deal with the fencer menace, many had to incorporate designs that made fencer's weaponary far less effective, but nonetheless menacing. Some improved armor, others used agility to reduce impact. Even now, fencers cause a lot of trouble, if an opposing unit cannot get close to it. And scorchers can ensure that the enemy will never wish to get too close.
Fencers raise their turret for better sight and range. It takes little time, but the light design makes the fencer unstable when it is deployed. This is a problem that deemed too hard to deal with, so they will always need to deploy to fire.

To further rebuild the land, during contest, rovers field out badgers Impalers to further humiliate opponent's any attempt at building any sort of solid defense at the frontlines. An impaler is a classical missile-powered artillery that is quick to deploy and fast to take out cheap defenses. If one isn't enough, add more. Since impaler was designed specifically for foes who build too many static defenses, impalers don't prove effective outside of its original goal; but more is unnecessary.

When the time of conquest is over, and the hour of contest is at hand, rovers can quickly field rippers, known to be both cheap and effective. Rippers are a modified scorcher with a cannon so big and powerful that it can mow down entire walls. However, the ripper is far less effective at taking down individual targets.
The ripper is best used as escort for badgers, impalers, dominatrixes, in order to not lose the speed advantage, nor to slow down faster designs.

If rovers need to ensure that the enemy does not pass a specific point, or if they need to slow down the opponent, they can field out badgers. Badgers were designed so that just a single vehicle can make terrain unpassable, if not deadly. In larger quantities, they can protect larger quantities of land. They are also quick to retreat.

If rovers need to quickly spot an enemy target, darts do the job. The darts are bikes with ridiculous speed and impressive sight range, meaning that they will spot any target before the target spots it. Don't use it for combat: Its health is too low.

To deal with heavy defenses, the scorcher design was given more armor. To further boost its mobility and strength in large quantities, it was given a plasma gun that arcs. This means the new design doesn't have to attack in a line. The ravager is effective at quickly breaching defenses, or taking out lone riot defenses, to let scorchers get behind enemy lines and cause even more havoc than before, stunning opponent's growth in the wasteland.

Tanks

The land is conquered, the battlefield contested. But you wish to break down the enemy's fort?
TANKS.
This medieval invention is full of primordial beasts.

LIKE MINOTAURS!
These bad boys have heavy armor that will make the enemy think they are immortal. (Note: they're not) Keep a huge army, and disregard them! You'll patch them back up anyway.

Need a battalion to retreat to? Say, "OGRES!"
Ogre might be fragile, but it makes up for it with devastating power! Few dare to face it up close! It's almost as if it was designed to protect the land with its mighty firepower.

Need to quickly catch raiders? No problem! Kodachis overwhelm any raider.

Are you tired of trying to burst down an enemy fortress? Use Emissaries! As a bonus, they can devastate any army foolish enough to try and protect the fort.

Do you wish to desolate the environment? Tremors have the power to destroy entire mountains! Literally!

Do you wish to overwhelm the enemy? Try Blitz tanks! A force that engages will have a hard time to disengage.

Do you wish to destroy key targets? Get a Cyclops.

Even the anti-air has guns as strong as a bodybuilder. So long as there's a path, there's a way.

Note to self: I might need to rewrite a lot of these, after I get to test out the theory-crafting, so that the little notes read like history more than like a manual after the rewrite.

Intel

Furthermore, every unit emits radio waves to communicate. However, these radio waves can be detected through radio towers, even if they can't be intercepted. A specialized radiotower can even pinpoint a target's location.

Radars are the ears of the mechanized machines. The bigger the radar, the more expensive the radar, the greater the sight of the radar. Although the radio waves can be hidden, radars remain effective.

Striders (land)

Striders have about two units: Athena, and Paladin. The rest are upgrades to the units, as the combat needs.

Athenas are a general-purpose engineer. They can quickly build up a blueprint made by another unit, finish a nanoframe, place a quick scouting radar dish at an important place, teleport a whole army by building a djin, scout the enemy with a widow, and more. If athenas prove to be very fragile, add funnelwebs. Their shield is effective at negating anti-air damage. Adding a funnelweb is a straight upgrade for athenas combat prowess.

Paladin should be treated like a hero unit. To make it deal better with small units, add a dante. To make it deal better with artillery, add a merlin or a scorpion. To give it better mobility, use athenas' djins. To provide covering ground, add small units to paladin's guard. Adding an iris (say, from an athena) can make the paladin cloaked. The possibilities are limited by imagination and game design. But the list doesn't end here!

In case you want to battle other striders, add an ultimatum. To give survivability to the paladin, add funnelweb.



Then, there is the Detriment. It is the more fun alternative to the superweapons.

I will talk about every other sea strider when the time is right.

Jumpbots

Jumpbots are a weird factory. Their blueprint unites all the weird and unusual technology into one, and practices them on the battlefield. Thus, they confuse both the enemy and yourself, an advantage to the one who knows the jumpbots.

Pyro experimented a long while ago by using flames against robots. Although iron does not combust, prolonged exposure to heat fries the circuitry of bots. Pyro's flame was designed by the original engineers to do just that. The pyro's simple design allowed it to be equipped with the utility tool that lets it quickly jump and skip distances, at the cost of slow speed. After prolonged warfare, the pyro proved just as potent in small quantities as the scorcher, if not more mobile.

Placeholder is an experimental tech, like the rest of the units, which utilizes a gravity anchor that immobilizes and concentrates enemy units. It allows for area of effect damage to be way more devastating, even if the explosion is far smaller. After prolonged warfare, placeholder proved to be the best tool for stopping assault unit advances, exclusive to the jumpbot factory.

Moderator is an experimental tech. It is a powerful skirmisher that fires a single shot, capable of invalidating a single unit. So long as there are more moderators than the raiders, moderators win. It is also effective at defending against planes, thanks to its burst hitscan weapon. Overall, it is a unique skirmisher that requires a different approach.

When the battlefield has "stabilized," jumpbots are capable of distabilizing it even more!

Jacks are designed as a moving wall of spikes. It destroys everything at close range, and it is hard to destroy. It is equipped with an experimental jump tech that lets it close distances or escape quickly. Thus, it perfectly draws the attention of the enemy, allowing the rest of the units to seed chaos unprovoked.

If that wasn't enough, jumpbots also have the Jugglenaut, which allows to quickly move mobile targets out of position, or throw them away like a piece of paper! It has all the upsides of a newton, down to anchoring planes. And if needed, it can jump away quickly! (Be warned: Jugglenaut is so fat that its jump can destroy units.)

The jumpbots have a unique artillery that spits fire, invalidating any raider units that get caught in the flame, called the Firewalker.

Because so many of jumpbots' weapons deal so little damage, they have the Skuttle, a cloaked bomb that sends a single unit to the shadow realm. And if that wasn't enough, it jumps. But it doesn't get decloaked as it jumps, likely due to its small size. Its blast size is only big enough to destroy one target, unless multiple targets are close together. Because skuttles are so unique, they aren't often deployed. But they have proven time and time to be the turning tide against heavy units an enemy can deploy.

For combat information about the skuttle, visit this page: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Skuttle

And for all the units that don't get destroyed by the skuttle, the factory has Puppies prepared. A Puppy is an armor-piercing mobile missile that is capable of replicating itself using metal remnants of other drones. A Puppy is cheap enough to deploy an army out of a devastated battlefield in sheer moments. A Puppy, my friend, is why we keep the battlefields clean of husks.

Ferocious.

Big Bertha

Big Bertha is a weapon that causes as much damage as the amount of land that is in its line of fire. However, it costs so much that the opposing factories will plan their attacks on the Bertha, guaranteed. Even if Bertha's damage is easy to block, it is not cheap to defend against.

Speedrun.

Hovercrafts

Hovercrafts are a weird factory. It's not easy to turn a highly-mobile but fragile technology of hovering into a battle unit. Even when the technology to repel matter from earth was made, allowing for minimum friction and maximum speed, not many dared to utilize the technology. Except the hovercrafts engineers.

Hovercrafts use their speed to their advantage. They rely less on destroying the enemy, and more on destroying the enemy before getting destroyed. So, they use only the most deadly of technology for one-hit one-kill. In other words, hovercraft engineers focused less on balance and more on glass cannon shenanigans.

Dagger is simple: High-burst high-speed raider. If it deals enough damage to the enemy? Dart wins. Thus, commanders try to bunch darts in big groups to ensure they always deal enough damage to destroy the target with a single volley, to not give enemy enough time to fight back. However, there are times when a single Dagger was capable of destroying undefended targets: Its damage is not to be underestimated.

Scallop is a menace. No other skirmisher is as annoying to engage with scorchers as- Scallop fires a volley of homing, high-explosive missiles. They were designed to be effective against every army, fast enough to disengage, with range high enough that their rockets can destroy the enemy before the scallop has the chance to get away. That being said, its low range and low speed means it's not good against artillery. Scallop was designed to fight anything but artillery.

Claymore is effective at stopping big groups of cheap targets. There was not much thinking involved in its design. The engineers thought that it's neat to have a unit that doesn't trigger its own mines by stepping on them, and called it a day. (Note: The engineer that asked the mines to roll was promoted, so now the mines do.)

There is not much to say about Mace, other than that it's effective at holding concentrated positions. It still suffers scallop's problem: Low health, low speed, vulnerable to artillery.

Bolas are an alternative to daggers. Although Bolas are incapable of targetting underwater units, Bolas have a ridiculous damage output on anything it targets. If they outnumber the enemy, and if they get close, the target can't get out nor pose significant resistance, thanks to its paralyzing weapon. The weapon does not stun, but it was designed to jam the weapon and equipment of its target.



When the conquest is over, and contest begins, hovercrafts don't pose much threat alone.

Their Lance is, by far, the best artillery piece made by any engineer, because it is an artillery that focuses on destroying the enemy before it gets destroyed.

The second best unit, Halberd, is the best because it chooses when it gets to get destroyed, and when it does not get destroyed. And it chooses to get destroyed when it targets a vulnerable target. Which can be never. That's by design, the hover engineers do let commanders control an indestructible brick army. Just like a wall, although the bricks are low, Halberds can be effectively used to distract enemy fire.

Hovers hit hard and run fast. And when they run, they better have a better factory to rely on.

Striders (naval)

Wouldn't it be cool if the ocean had heavy ships?

Striders have plenty of great tools for the naval combat. The Athenas are still useful, and so are Ultimatums, they remain barely changed. The only major difference in athenas is that they can only build Halberds, Aspis, Iris? Djinn, and Ultimatums.

Limited to the naval battle, Shoguns are designed to barrage the opposing ships with overwhelming power, and to besiege the land. It outranges any naval artillery. (Note: Envoys still deal more damage per miserable cost, motivating the naval army to destroy envoys before they get close)

A Reef... has been repurposed over the years. Its drones have been repurposed to capture enemy units. However, the drones are as fragile as glass. A Reef can, theoretically, restock plane units. And a Reef stockpiles disarm missiles. The disarm missile can, theoretically, allow to capture high-value targets, if they go too deep into the enemy territory (Test if reef can capture underwater units). The Reef is yet to show effectiveness on the battlefield, and it remains in the testing stage.

Detriment can assault the ground when no naval ship is capable. Detriment dominates anything that faces the Detriment in a fair fight. It was designed to bring a battle to a close with overwhelming firepower.

Ultimatums can destroy high-value ship targets, and they act as submarines. As a nice bonus, they're a cheap strider that can attack the land. They weren't meant for the sea, but manage to function at sea as well as they do on land.